Are you (still) an Anarchist poll 2021 edition.

[Spandex]

My position on this is a bit IWCA-ish I have to say. Living in poor areas and seeing what not the 'war on drugs' has done, but actual drug dealing and the gangs and anti-social behaviour that has gone along with it has done is very depressing and has fucked up the lives of loads of people that are nothing to do with drugs, largely working class people that can't afford to move to a 'nicer' area. The area I live in now is largely dominated by young organized drug dealing gangs on the street nearly 24/7 openly dealing, racing cars, threatening people etc. Plenty of families have already left, and I expect more will follow.

So anarchist - but with a dash of Genghis Khan when it comes to drug dealing and anti-social behaviour.

The problems associated with 'drugs' are largely caused by the War on Drugs. Handing the production, distribution, sale and regulation of illegal drugs to criminal gangs is a guaranteed way of seeing the arising problems go unaddressed.

And those problems absolutely have negative effects on communities, predominantly working class communities. There's currently a wave of heroin use in my local area and my front garden is a popular spot for people to shoot up. Unless you've lived that experience it's hard to understand how frustrating and unnerving it is. Obviously problem drug users are troubled people who need help, but all the empathy and understanding in the world doesn't mean shit when scary fuckers are sat on your doorstep with a needle in their arm, leaving their shit (both metaphorical and literal) behind when they shuffle off, living their fucked up lives literally on.your.doorstep. I don't want my kids seeing that. I don't want to be woken up at two in the morning when some shifty bloke trys it on with a woman he's given smack to or trys to break into a motorbike parked outside.

You can ask them politely not to and they'll either be all 'yeah, sorry, won't do it again' before being back the next day or get affronted that you question their inalienable right to shoot up where they are. Being less polite isn't an option - many of them are bigger than me, feel absolutely entitled to use my doorstep to shoot up, don't like to be made to feel unwelcome and know perfectly well where me and my young kids live.

The police can't really help. If you dial 999 they have better things to do than rush out blues & twos to move on some annoying drug user who may well have gone by the time they get there. If the community organise to call the police every time the drug users show up the police still won't attend, but the crime stats start to look bad, so police start to patrol and eventually the drug users move on to one of two or three other quiet local spots and it becomes their problem and the police stop patrolling and then the drug users come back when they get moved on from where they went to and it all carries on where it all left off.

It's understandable that some communities will form vigilante gangs to shoo away drug users. But that has it's own problems. One thing that has often caused trouble in discussing this is the language around drugs. Drugs aren't one thing. There are lots of different drugs, each with their own unique set of issues. When communities form anti-drug groups what they usually mean is anti-problem-heroin-user groups, but you say 'drugs' and it means different things to different people. Drugs is smoking a bit of weed. Drugs is taking pills and dancing all night. Drugs is taking speed and running around with a crazy glint in your eye. Drugs is snorting coke and becoming an annoying twat. Drugs is heroin and all the problems that come with it. The whole debate and what the Anti-Drug groups are doing becomes confused.

Vigilante groups can't offer the support and help problem drug users need. All they can do is move them on so they become someone else's problem. They may be a solution to the immediate issue, but they can't and won't do anything to solve the root causes. They can't change the rules to provide shooting rooms, clean needles, clean supplies breaking the link with the criminal gangs that supply heroin, help to stop for people who are at a point where they want it. The problem is the war on drugs and the way its fought and as long as it continues the same problems will keep repeating.

 

[chainsawjob]

mr csj says he's an anarchist (and I really think he is), and reckons I'm a "confused anarchist"

 

[planetgeli]

And we're not talking about users here are we, but dealers and those above them.

Are you? How do you know how to separate them on say, the Blackbird Leys estate? And aren't the users the actual driving force of the ASB? Because it's them who need to steal etc in order to afford massively overblown black market prices. So sorry, but I don't believe that bit.

As for the first para, yes, of course, great stuff. You're supporting people.

That's what I do.

 

[danny la rouge]

Shall we beat up PRU kids as well?

Was that at me? I didn’t respond because it didn’t seem connected to anything I said. I don’t think beating up kids is a good way to deal with anti social behaviour.

 

[planetgeli]

Was that at me? I didn’t respond because it didn’t seem connected to anything I said. I don’t think beating up kids is a good way to deal with anti social behaviour.

No it wasn't.

 

[chainsawjob]

mr csj says he's an anarchist (and I really think he is), and reckons I'm a "confused anarchist"

Reckon I'm anarchist-curious, like xenon. I agree with the basic premises (afaia), but also with proper left politics.

 

[danny la rouge]

No it wasn't.

Cool, cool, cool.

 

[LDC]

Are you? How do you know how to separate them on say, the Blackbird Leys estate? And aren't the users the actual driving force of the ASB? Because it's them who need to steal etc in order to afford massively overblown black market prices. So sorry, but I don't believe that bit.

As for the first para, yes, of course, great stuff. You're supporting people.

That's what I do.

I don't know that specific estate and issues there, but round where I am none of the dealers are users, it's very clearly defined, but whatever, it's a bit of a thread derail.

Also you obviously know more and have given this topic much more thought than me, so like I said I largely agree with what you say.

 

[Dom Traynor]

mr csj says he's an anarchist (and I really think he is), and reckons I'm a "confused anarchist"

Interestingly (to me possibly not others) my former partner of 12 years got converted to Libertarian Socialism / Anarchism by me while she converted me to Labour Party politics. Our positions after that are literally reversed however I suspect I could win her away from Anarchism by showing her the bookfair thread on here because she's always been smarter than me.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Bring back the IWCA!

Damn right. I heard it's fun to stay there, you can have a good meal, etc

 

[Pickman's model]

Interestingly (to me possibly not others) my former partner of 12 years got converted to Libertarian Socialism / Anarchism by me while she converted me to Labour Party politics. Our positions after that are literally reversed however I suspect I could win her away from Anarchism by showing her the bookfair thread on here because she's always been smarter than me.

If the threads here about the LP haven't made you reconsider your views then the bf thread unlikely to influence her

 

[Flavour]

I feel very anarchist on many levels but must admit:
1) that strength of feeling was massively increased since living in Italy and attending anarchist squats and seeing what self-organization can look like (with various levels of success)
2) that strength of feeling has recently suffered because most of that scene are anti-vax and it pisses me off and makes me feel very distant from them

 

[redsquirrel]

I’m anti prohibition and pro harm reduction. But I’m also pro communities empowering themselves to deal with anti social behaviour.

This.

Even when I don't agree with how they are going about doing it working class groups organising to try and build measures to protect and support themselves is a good thing. And that does not (have to) mean violence or vigilantism, I'll use the example of aboriginal communities that have decided to go dry again. This has it own problems, it certainly is not going to solve the fundamental issue but then that is true of much of what any pro-working class group does.

I don't see any contradiction between being anti-prohibition and pro-harm reduction while at the same time looking at how working class people have tried to deal with drugs (legal and illegal). I'm by no means endorsing everything, or even most, of what the Zapatistas, Black Panthers or even the British abstinence/temperance movement did on this score but I do think these (and other) examples are worth looking at and using both the positives and negatives to develop new fighs.

 

[platinumsage]

no

 

[deeyo]

Whilst technically I wouldn't call myself an anarchist as I'm more influenced by various strands of libertarian Marxism...as far 99.9% of people are concerned, yeah, I'm as anarchist as ever.

i liked this, but i'd go the other way & call myself a communist.

(if i had to specify, i'd rather call myself a left communist / council communist, than a libertarian or anarchist one.)

but whats in a name? to be a communist you have to be an activist, and i'm not, anymore. and i agree with this

I don't really know what it means any more to be an anarchist (or a communist) in a time of absence of a living grassroots movement for w/c self-emancipation. Anarchism would always form a specific strain of thought within such a movement pushing in a more emancipatory and radical direction, but in the absence of such a movement so many people ended up within individualist lifestylism or posturing.

I'm an anarchist communist but have lost sight of how to connect that to meaningful political action. Probably partly because I'm middle class in terms of job (comfortable doctor).

but i'd like to add that i think the concept of a 'middle class' is unproductive/misleading.
the main struggle is still between oppressors & oppressed. and the main battle-line is still were labour meets capital.
the international capitalist class is small, maybe 5 per cent of the world population. add some 10-15% of their closest allies in the upper 'middle stratas/classes' & the rest would be the working class & their (potential) allies.

we are many - they are few. we could build a better society for all of us.

 

[planetgeli]

This.

Even when I don't agree with how they are going about doing it working class groups organising to try and build measures to protect and support themselves is a good thing. And that does not (have to) mean violence or vigilantism, I'll use the example of aboriginal communities that have decided to go dry again. This has it own problems, it certainly is not going to solve the fundamental issue but then that is true of much of what any pro-working class group does.

I don't see any contradiction between being anti-prohibition and pro-harm reduction while at the same time looking at how working class people have tried to deal with drugs (legal and illegal). I'm by no means endorsing everything, or even most, of what the Zapatistas, Black Panthers or even the British abstinence/temperance movement did on this score but I do think these (and other) examples are worth looking at and using both the positives and negatives to develop new fighs.

That's a very reasonable post Red.

I'm not going to start up again because it is a derail as LynnDoyleCooper said. And I don't think this message board is an ideal place to have this conversation anyway because it is such a complex matter that needs for than a couple of paragraphs a post to get anywhere. The Zapatistas, for example, have a very specific issue going on there which includes black propaganda against them, the fact that Mexican cartels are a huge issue, and the need, for the EZLN, to have specific priorities because loose talk can cost lives in a war. But (and I say this from experience having spent time in Chiapas) even their stuff, which might be seen as puritanical out of context, is sometimes bullshit propaganda like their claim that not one person has touched alcohol here for x years etc. I have seen that with my own eyes so I know that not to be true. But in a war, propaganda is necessary. But it doesn't make it right. And yes, I know you said you don't endorse everything they say. I'm just mentioning it because I have direct experience.

People use drugs, all sorts of drugs (the Peruvians are fiercely proud of the coca plant) for all sorts of reasons. ASB is not an inevitable outcome of drug use, it's culturally specific. ASB associated with drug use in the UK does not come from the use of drugs but the specific consequences of the WoD in an unjust, uneven capitalist society, and here even more so for many other reasons. But it isn't the junk that makes the ASB. The kids in Townhill in Swansea didn't smash up their own community because they were 'high'. That's not even close to an explanation and moving the drug problem on there to somewhere else solves nothing. Fighting the injustice of poverty and zero opportunity there will do far more to change things than just going 'drugs are bad m'kay, let's move on the dealers'.

Like no new dealers would take their place. Like it or not, drugs aren't the problem in that context. They are a symptom of a much wider economic problem. And the WoD.

And I'll stop there.

 

[Dom Traynor]

I feel very anarchist on many levels but must admit:
1) that strength of feeling was massively increased since living in Italy and attending anarchist squats and seeing what self-organization can look like (with various levels of success)
2) that strength of feeling has recently suffered because most of that scene are anti-vax and it pisses me off and makes me feel very distant from them

I heard there's a strong ant vax sentiment in Greek Anarchism as well which is also a shame as it's another large and vibrant movement.

 

[steeplejack]

Bring back the IWCA!

Have the IWCA folded, or just ‘in abeyance’?

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Freedom of Thought.
Freedom of Speech.
Freedom of and from Religion.
Egalitarianism, pragmatic and non-dogmatic.
Emancipation of Women.
Freedom of Assembly.
Democracy from the bottom up, in all areas of life deemed appropriate by those involved.
Co-operation rather than Competition.
Environmental awareness.
Internationalism and anti-racism.
Sexual freedoms.
Economic and Social decentralisation.
Workers' control of economic activity.

Put all that together (perhaps with a few others thrown in) and you get anarchism, more or less? What's not to like?

Many or most ordinary people agree with much or most of all that. How to achieve it all is the problem.

 

[TopCat]

I ironed my big black and red flag.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Are you? How do you know how to separate them on say, the Blackbird Leys estate? And aren't the users the actual driving force of the ASB? Because it's them who need to steal etc in order to afford massively overblown black market prices. So sorry, but I don't believe that bit.

As for the first para, yes, of course, great stuff. You're supporting people.

That's what I do.

The dealers on the Blackbird Leys Estate had taken over the community centre and were running their operations from there. Presumably you think that’s fine because prohibition. So in that context the IWCA drove the dealers out returning the asset back to the community. Fucking terrible isn’t it?
The other aspect in your critique that is missing is that the IWCA in Blackbird Leys also ran a sports club, presumably to show disaffected youth another way and give them something to do.

Anyway, somewhat bizarre to be having this discussion on an anarchism thread.

 

[l'Otters]

 

[redcogs]

A lapsed and tired trot distrustful of Leninist forms of organisation and authority. Saddened and distressed by the absence of a vibrant and politically conscious workers movement. As one in the waiting room for the exit door (70 ffs) it doesn't much matter how i self define, but i remain friendly towards international socialism and would welcome the overthrow of the profit system. im certainly not hostile towards anarchism or self proclaimed anarchists.